In various kinds of microsurgery, it is often desirable to have two or more microscopes mounted together from a common support so that two or more surgical personnel can view the same operative site simultaneously. A variety of such mounting assemblies are available but the tilt angle which the optical path of the individual microscopes forms with a common vertical axis is usually set at the factory and is not adjustable. Each of the microscopes comes with its own objective lens. Each objective lens has a fixed focal length which is the working distance of the microscope from the operative field. If one wishes to change the working length, one must change the objective lens of each microscope and, thus, must adjust the tilt angle of each microscope so that the optical paths of the microscopes will cross at their new focal point. For a longer focal distance, the microscope tilt angle will decrease. For most multiple microscopes this adjustment must be made at the factory. Great care must be used when tilting the individual microscopes to make sure that each microscope is tilted at the same angle so that the optical paths of the microscope converge on the same spot so that the users of the multiple microscopes will all be looking at the same operating field.
It would be particularly advantageous to be able to synchronize the tilting of a number of microscopes without having to adjust the individual microscopes but by merely adjusting a single mounting. In this way, one of the surgical personnel, perhaps the chief surgeon, could adjust one's microscope to the desired operating field and the other microscopes disposed on the same housing would automatically be adjusted to the same field so that other surgical personnel, particularly interns and residents, could be assured of viewing the same operative site as the chief surgeon. A mounting assembly which would permit this synchronized tilting of a plurality of microscopes would add flexibility to the multiple microscope system without the disadvantage of using valuable operating room time to make sure that the microscopes were properly synchronized. The operating room personnel could quickly change objective lenses and working distances to adjust the microscope to work in a deep cavity.
In those instances where one of the microscopes is not being used by one of the operating room personnel but instead is connected to a recording or video monitoring system, the operating room surgeon can be assured that his recording system will be viewing the same operating field.